BBQ Sauce

BBQ sauce is something that can be so easily made at home, I never understand why people by that bottle stuff at the store.  If you open your 'fridge and cupboards you can easily find everything you need to create a BBQ sauce at home that tastes 100x better than that preservative laden stuff from the store.  And the beauty is almost every sauce starts with 4-5 very simple ingredients and then you add what ever extra ingredients to get the flavor you're going for.  This recipe here is for a sweet pineapple BBQ sauce that is great on pork and chicken as well.  It's a tomato based sauce, similar to those from Kansas City and Texas, not a mustard a vinegar based Carolina style sauce (which I will admit are my favs). This not a dipping sauce.  It's a fantastic marinade and it's best when used for basting chicken and pork as they slow cook in your oven, smoker or on your grill.  If this is the first sauce you'll be making from scratch you're going to find that it's not brown, not super sticky and tastes nothing like what you get at the store and that's because this is what REAL BBQ sauce looks and tastes like.  ENJOY!

Ingredients:
28 oz can of tomato puree
2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
2 tsp brown mustard
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp minced garlic
1 TBS maple syrup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 TBS teriyaki sauce
1 8oz can of crushed pineapple

Bring the tomato, Worcestershire, mustard, garlic, salt, pepper and cumin to a simmer.  Add the brown sugar, maple syrup, ginger and teriyaki next.  Give it a good whisk to incoporate the sugar.  Once this is all set, add the pineapple (including juices) and whisk.  Let it simmer for 20-30 minutes on the stove. Make sure you taste along the way to see if needs more of anything. And that's it.  Once the sauce is cool, transfer it in small batches to a blender and smooth it out (the pineapple chunks will blend right into the sauce). After that, use it as a marinade or a basting sauce.  It also can be frozen, so if you think you made too much, you didn't.  It will hold in the 'fridge for 5-7 days. 

Here's this sauce on a 2lb pork tenderloin, slow grilled at medium low for 25 minutes (to achieve medium rare).  Pork was marinated in olive oil, salt and pepper for 24 hours and then a cup of the sauce was added 3 hours prior to grilling.  Baste the meat every 5-10 minutes as you grill it.